Victims of natural disasters and those living in warzones could benefit from greater access to health services through online therapy programs, according to Swinburne University Professor Dr Michael Kyrios.

Dr Kyrios, along with staff and students from Swinburne’s e-therapy unit, the Australian Psychological Society and the International Association of Applied Psychology, held an information booth at the annual United Nations Department of Public Information / Non-Government Organisations conference earlier this week in Melbourne.

Swinburne University’s e-therapy unit were promoting the contribution psychology could provide in helping the UN deal with global health problems such as poverty and trauma.

“We’re presenting a whole range of ideas on how psychology can help the UN achieve its millennium goal, in particular with things to do with poverty, mental health, cultural diversity. There’s a whole range of issues where psychology can contribute something,” Dr Kyrios told Neos Kosmos.

Dr Kyrios, whose expertise is in psychological treatments, is involved with a team at Swinburne in developing a range of Internet based psychological treatments aimed at anxiety disorders.

The 12 week online program includes weekly downloads of information and videos, and begins with a diagnosis to identify the type of anxiety disorder the client is suffering from.

The two types of treatment available include an automated program, which is presented online on a weekly basis, as well as an assist version, which provides an opportunity for the client to communicate with a trained professional via email, Dr Kyrios said.

Dr Kyrios believes the program could offer effective post traumatic counselling for flood victims in Pakistan or earthquake victims in China.

“Obviously a lot of people don’t have computer skills there either, but we have the capacity to be able to train people to use the computer in order to be able to get the information,” he said. “This is the perfect program for the UN to be disseminating to its refugee centres and trauma centres because there just isn’t enough psychological support there and this specialised information is presented in a logical manner on the basis of clinical experience,” he said.

“One of the things we thought was perhaps we could work together with countries and the UN to translate these programs into specific languages and therefore disseminate them where there aren’t psychologists…our program is not just for clients or patients, it’s also for professionals who are able to download information and use it,” he said.

The online therapy program is also bound for Greece later this year.

“I plan to go to Greece and translate these programs into Greek. Greece is one of Europe’s highest users of the Internet, believe it or not,” Dr Kyrios said, adding “I’ve met with some Greek academics that we had recently here in Australia and they’re very keen for us to get this up”.